


towards the wild (not away)

by choppersupportsgirls (earlieststar)



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, I Don't Care For Canon, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kaku-centric, the world government is a bitch., there is no plot here just Feelings, what if Dangerous Murderers could be Found Family too...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24290362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlieststar/pseuds/choppersupportsgirls
Summary: kaku doesn’t want to run, but he wants even less to kill his brother.(in which kaku betrays the world government, lucci hunts him down and cp9, against all odds, has become some distorted image of what a family could be)
Relationships: Kaku & CP9, Kaku & Kalifa, Kaku & Rob Lucci
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	towards the wild (not away)

**Author's Note:**

> look. kaku turning coat is a Top Notch concept and im here for it so im gonna try my hand at this  
> i wrote this all at once and didnt stop to breath, think twice or (god help me) reread it, so there might be typos and there might be errors and its probably somewhat thematically inconsistent. it happens, you were warned  
> cp9 is a hysterical concept to me and i love them they are SO dysfunctional and SO weird and even though they are decidedly dark in the manga itself,,,,,,, why not make it heavier yk? i mean, nothing was stopping me and nothing is stopping you so.  
> i hope you enjoy and have a lovely day <3

kalifa tosses her still wet hair over her shoulder and lowers the brush she was using to comb through it. her glasses glint under the lamp of his bedroom, even if she barely moved an inch - he’s become habituated to relate blinking light with her, has come to recognize this as the smallest amount of flair she allows herself for vanity. she sighs, uncrosses her legs and then folds one over the other in the opposite way, places the brush on top of his bed and looks at a ship blueprint hanging on his wall. it was the first ship he helped build in water 7.

his room is a small, cozy space with hastily repainted walls and messy clothes carefully placed to encover the military precision that was beaten into them as children. it’s situated in a main alley corner, top floor apartment he shares with lucci, and his poor excuse for a window looks about four meters of free fall from the fire escape of kalifa’s own studio. her back is straight and tense as her foot kicks a galley-la cap farther on the floor. he wrinkles his nose, knows he won’t like this conversation, or whatever this encounter is going to be.

kaku lets his head hit the wall behind him, legs crossed on top of the covers, closes his eyes. she still isn’t looking at him when she says, “six hours,” in a voice that is almost too soft to be hers. she bites her lip and stands up, not a single sound made from the movements (but you don’t spend years upon years breaking skulls under your feet beside someone without being attuned to the way the air parts to give space for their heat, and he’s known kalifa all his life). he doesn’t open his eyes until she’s somewhere beyond his walls, brush left behind as if it had always belonged to his room and not to her. it’s painful to look at it.

he doesn’t know where lucci is, and by that hour blueno is still on shift at the bar, but kalifa said she could give him six hours and he believes her.

it’s going to be her to confirm to lucci where he went, kaku knows, but the droplets that fell on top of his comforter as she detangled her hair and the silent feeling of her bare feet moving around his room for the last time are more than enough for him to know there’s a part of her that doesn’t want to. she’s angry that he’s gonna make her do that, most likely, among all the turbulence brewing just behind her eyes, only barely below her skin. the chill, inflexible mask she’s learned to force over her face has never done enough to contain the fire in her heart. kalifa's always been more than she looks, a wild animal contained only by its own amusement, untamed under a docile pretense.

even then, she’s going to stay and she’s going to obey. they will throw him as prey to a leopard, not his sister. kalifa is the most competent to gather intel on this mission, anyways, and it does good to let a feral pet have some fun with the hunt every once in a while. lucci is going to enjoy chasing him, would enjoy killing him.

it’s not even the worst part.

he takes nothing but his will. not his luggage and not the lingering (unkillable, even though they had tried, _oh_ , how they tried) affection for his siblings. where he’s going, wherever it is, he can’t afford the luxury of hesitating.

it’s unfair, of course, but it had been unfair from the start. they had never asked to be child soldiers. they had never asked to become weapons. children don’t have choices against global superpowers. they even had almost discarded kaku, once, almost believed him too kind for what they wanted to use him for. it may stand to reason they made a mistake in not going through with it back then, seeing as why he’s running now, but they were right - this isn’t _kindness_. kindness is an exercise of self-discipline kaku has never cared for. his feet are lighter than air and his hands are calloused by aggression, the lines of his body lethal in every single way. he knows how to reach inside someone’s body and squeeze the light out of them, how the exact amount of blood someone can lose before their heart stops feels covering his hands. his fingertips recognize wood grain as easily as they puncture through flesh and bone. he has smiled over men’s last pleading whispers, last strangled screams, the unnatural sounds of them choking on their own bile and drowning in blood too far from anything resembling kindness; he lets them suffocate.

he’s as much a monster as any of them, and he’s proud of it. there’s no place for kindness in the thoughts of someone who has taken life after life after life, has been made executioner by kin, is irrevocably friendly with Death.

their mistake, actually, was throwing kaku off a cliff and not stopping him from learning how to fly. the falling turns into adrenaline, the catching turns into joy, and they lost him there. no safety net, no take backs, no control, and kaku went from weapon to force of nature. the wind embraces him like he imagines a mother might have, makes him a honorable son.

and then water 7, with its high buildings he could jump from, with its secrets and schemes and only playful violence. water 7, with its own unrestrained, chaotic force of nature, every year crashing into the city as uncaring for human life as lucci. water 7, with its mayor in rolled up sleeves showing him how to build something that could glide on top of the waves, with its smiling shipwrights erecting boats the size of an island, sturdy creations that never, ever tried to tame the ocean.

kaku flies, and when he lands on water 7, he falls in love: aqua laguna, the destruction accepted as unstoppable, the waves and the boats that he could make, too, and would dance over the ocean like he did on every free fall. none of his siblings could have ever been tamed, and they (the judges, the jury, the blind) don’t even have the right to be surprised it’s kaku the one breaking from his chains. they made him this, raised him to taste blood on his tongue and rejoice. giving him wings and letting him love Life, too, might have been an accident. a mistake they would come to regret.

kaku doesn’t want to run, truth be told. what good is in escaping from a cage just to live a life on the lam? he knows the game of prey and predator, even if he hasn’t felt like this for a long time. it’s not a part he would enjoy playing, it’s not what he plans on. 

he still runs. it’s lucci after him and- he has never been afraid of any of them, but he can’t not run from lucci. between cliff’s edges and ferocious tides and sharp claws ripping human being’s flesh centimeters from his face, he’s always loved wild things. he can’t help but love his brother too, and because of that he can’t kill him.

kalifa’s brush still and humid on his bed when he left is a pointed memory of how he could not kill any of them. kindness or softness don’t encompass the instinct beating in the same tempo as his heart, running through his veins with cortisol, covering his skin more intimately than the strongest tekkai. kaku won’t kill lucci, not for his freedom, not for his life, and he won’t even try, either. he runs, he’s hunted.

kaku runs and runs and runs, hops on the smallest stolen boat he finds, somewheres’ eternal poses on top of a table in the solitary cabin. the ocean roars and he refuses to remember a younger lucci curled up like a deceptively harmless cat on the grass near his feet, claws flexing in and out of sight hypnotically. he rolls rope around his fist and remembers paulie showing him how to knot down a sail guard safely, unknowing of how kaku has been taught to asphyxiate someone with any piece of string and tie a pretty bow afterwards.

he shivers with the knowledge of being scrutinized by violence in the shape of a man, but it’s enough to make him grin that the emotion making his heart pump is excitement. he won’t kill his brother, and the world government can’t make him, anymore. he’s running towards the wild, not away.

the rope burns in his hands, the waves crash against his flimsy excuse for a ship and he’s alive under the thrill of this all encompassing awareness of his siblings. kalifa, restrained poorly on top of sharp heels on her 9 to 5 pseudo-job, tapping nails that have pierced lungs on a cheap clipboard. blueno, polishing glasses and listening to gossip as if he didn’t bend the atmosphere to his will for fun. kumadori and his make up dripping black in ink and blood. jyabura, broken-hearted and sharp-teethed. fukurou and his loose lips, an absolute wall falling on whoever fool stand before him.

lucci, and his stupid bird, feral and alive and his, like all of them. chasing him to the ends of the world, if that’s where kaku’s heading. kaku doesn’t know, only decided it will be somewhere with things he can make and things he can leap off of. as far as wishes go, his seem to be quite simple, almost attainable enough that his brother being on his trail makes no difference. almost.

but it does. it makes it _better_ to know lucci is behind him, if only for the pleasure of ripping kaku apart. turning them into wild little things, they had forgotten to tell them not to become a family (another accident, even more regretful mistake). it’s why lucci is breaking order of command for him. it’s violent and it’s unkind and in that threat of a painful and slow death kaku finds himself more alive than he’s ever been. lucci wants to kill him.

(it’s the best part.)

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr on @choppersupportsgirls


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